A 25-year-old engineer from Pune has bagged his dream job with Amazon at a time when job security itself is seen as a blessing, let alone being able to crack your dream job. Hrishikesh Raskar, an incoming SDE2 engineer at Amazon, is the son of two vegetable sellers. He has worked really hard to hone his skills during the pandemic to make the cut with the American e-commerce giant.
A story of grit and determination, Hrishikesh Raskar, an IIT Roorkee graduate, was unable to land a job of his preference and settled for a small start-up as his first job. Since his childhood, he was acutely aware of his family’s financial situation. He worked hard towards attaining an education from a prestigious institution, and his efforts paid off when he cracked the IIT entrance in the second attempt with a scholarship. However, as time passed, he realised that his CGPA score was inadequate for him to sustain his scholarship and had to take a loan to continue his degree. Having taken up several odd jobs such as freelance tech writing and online tutoring to earn money, Hrishikesh focused solely on his responsibilities at his career and put in 12 to 14 hours a day, and weekends, in an attempt to master the skills of a backend engineer. Despite doing well in his role, he continued to foster his dream of working for a FAANG company and practised religiously on platforms like InterviewBit and LeedCode.
“Today, I am amazed at the fact that I have landed my dream job in one of the most admired companies in the world. I am happy to share my story on World Youth Skills Day, as young Indian job seekers must seriously take the need for upskilling. I owe this job to my friends and family, who encouraged me to stay focused even as the prospect for change looked bleak in the ongoing pandemic. I have always been studious since childhood, but COVID made us all realise that earning a degree doesn’t guarantee us jobs in the first place. Forget about making it to world leaders in technology. But I was determined to be ready for the future by brushing up my fundamentals and re-learn engineering concepts better so that I could truly apply my knowledge to find solutions. This is when I enrolled myself with Scaler Academy in their very first batch and gained practical knowledge under industry experts who taught me to put theory into practice,” shares Hrishikesh Raskar.
Scaler, a leading ed-tech start-up for upskilling students and working professionals, works to mentor budding tech talent and help them achieve their career dreams. Scaler equips students with industry-ready skills and coaches them on how best to approach the interview process at leading tech companies. The company believes that there is no dearth of talent in the country, and that the gap in demand for engineers and their supply is merely a mismatch of skill expectations. Intending to remedy this, Scaler works with industry leaders and subject experts to provide the potential workforce with future-ready skills so that they can hit the ground running when hired into the technology industry.
Speaking on Hrishikesh’s success, Abhimanyu Saxena, Co-founder, Scaler and InterviewBit, said, “India is home to some of the brightest minds, yet we see much of this talent is untapped by the industry due to a skill gap. As witnessed in the past few years, there has been a marked shift from hiring based on educational qualifications to skilled-based hiring. The candidate is appraised based on their ability to perform given tasks and solve critical thinking problems in line with the role they are being hired for. The recent pandemic has further highlighted the need for continuous upskilling to stay relevant in the field and to be able to adapt to the rapidly evolving industry landscape. Through industry knowledge and expertise, we hope to continue to inspire such success stories, where deserving talent can achieve their goals through dedicated mentoring and guidance in the right direction.”
